It is no coincidence that in a country where the army and other law enforcing agencies abuse women, using them as sex slaves, raping and murdering with impunity, that trafficking in women should be on the rise. While this is true for many parts of Burma, Kachin State on the Sino-Burma border seems to bearing the brunt of this social malaise where women are trafficked mostly to China.
This alarming in trend in trafficking in women from Kachin State to neighbouring China has been highlighted and documented in "Eastward Bound" by the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT) based in Thailand.
Increasing numbers of Kachin women are being trafficked as brides to China. The phenomenon is the cumulative fallout of the deteriorating political and economic situation in Burma. Finding little option, in a country where jobs are scarce and women are not only at the receiving end but are prey to bands of Burmese Army soldiers and other members of other law enforcing agencies, women desperate to eke out a living for themselves and their families chose to migrate to China.
Unfortunately, in their quest to find a source of livelihood, the ethnic Kachin women are increasingly ending up as forced brides and in the unseemly entertainment industry, the new report by the indigenous women's group says.
"Eastward Bound" by KWAT painstakingly documents the trafficking cases of 163 women and girls between 2004 and mid-2007, almost all to China. While 40 per cent of the women have simply vanished into thin air, most of the rest were forced to marry men in provinces across eastern China.
Transported across to marry men in eastern China in Shandong Province for instance, women have talked about being shown to many men, sometimes in market places before being chosen. In all cases women and girls travelled to China to support their families. They were offered jobs in towns close to the Burmese border as maids, in restaurant or as factory workers with salaries ranging from 250 to 700 Yuan a month (US $ 36-100). However, on crossing the border they were handed over to brokers and were transported in buses, cars and trains to other locations deep inside China.
The study by the women's group reveals about 15 percent of women were seeking to pay school fees either for themselves or their siblings. Some needed money to pay medical bills while another seven per cent needed to earn because their husbands or their fathers were drug addicts and could not provide for their families.
The documentation is frightening in its enormity for about a quarter of those trafficked were under the age of 18 and therefore minor girls. Alarming as it may sound most of these girls, as young as 14, were sold as brides for an average of about USD 2,000, usually to farmers across the border in China.
About 90 per cent of the women are forced to be brides while the rest are forced into the entertainment industry or forced into unpaid domestic work. One third of the women are despatched to Yunnan province while two thirds find their way to eastern China with Shandong accounting for the highest number of cases. In some cases Chinese men were said to come to villages and towns close to the Burma border to chose and buy brides. Sometimes the women are taken beyond the border to be sold. The women, who KWAT talked to, spoke of many men looking them over before being chosen. The women are sometimes tied so that they cannot run away. Young healthy women able to bear children are picked p faster.
Originally two thirds of the women from Kachin state and one third from Shan state were trafficked with the majority of the women being from poorer quarters of large towns like Myitkyina, Waingmaw (Wai Maw) and Bhamo in Kachin state and Kutkai in Shan State. Again trafficking is also in evidence in remote areas like Putao, Sumprabum and Tanai (Danai) in Kachin state, to name a few. Of late the trend is noticeable in Rangoon, Mandalay and Pyinmana in central Burma.
There have also been attempts at buying babies. A trafficker forced a woman five months pregnant to abort before she was sold as a bride. In another instance, a woman who had a cesarean section was rejected and then forced to undergo medical tests to ensure she could still have children. The men who buy the women are mostly farmers with an occasional shop keeper or two.
Two instances of buying babies have been highlighted by the women's organisation. A young woman five months pregnant was taken by an old friend to Shenyang in northeastern China. The friend kept her locked up till she gave birth and then told her she would sell the baby for 30,000 Yuan US $ 4,370. A neighbour came to know about what was going on and informed the police who arrested the friend and arranged for the woman and her baby to be sent back to the Kachin border. Another woman was forced to sell her two-month-old daughter in Yingjiang. The baby was sold for 5,000 Yuan US $ 730 but she received only 200,000 Kyat US $ 160. Interestingly there is one difference now, KWAT points out. More married women are being trafficked accounting for 10 per cent. They are mostly women seeking jobs in China to support their family.
"Eastward Bound" draws attention to how the Burmese junta's new anti-trafficking law, passed in September 2005, has been an abject failure, not only to help curb trafficking, but also to protect the rights of trafficked women. Characteristic of the ruthless Burmese junta's attitude towards its own populace, especially women, victims have been refused any sort of assistance by the Burmese Embassy in Beijing. The hapless girls and women have been denied entry back to their homeland in Burma, and worse falsely accused of being involved in trafficking. The misery of trafficked women even after they have escaped from the clutches of those they were sold to, is no better if not worse with a case being unearthed of a trafficked woman, ironically accused of trafficking and raped in detention by local Burmese officials. The documentation on the plight of the women is horrific.
In a recent instance four women in the age group of 17 to 22 were tricked into traveling to eastern Burma on the assurance that they would perform Kachin cultural dances at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They were promised 600 Yuan per month as well as food clothing and accommodation. They practiced Kachin traditional dances for almost a month and then in September 2007 a Chinese woman took them to Kunming from where they travelled by train for two to three days to Hangzhou close to Shanghai and forced work as hostesses.
"The Burmese junta's anti-trafficking laws are a mockery of the plight of the women being trafficked, given that the oppressive regime systematically violates human rights in its own country. Its policies are forcing citizens to migrate," Gum Khong, a researcher of the report was quoted as saying to the Kachin News Group (KNG), of the Burmese media in exile, which has been relentlessly tracking the plight of Kachin women through its reportage.
The KWAT, points out that though international agencies have sounded the alarm about the alarming increase in trafficking in Burma, especially after Cyclone Nargis devastated part of the country, the women's organization has cautioned against indirectly endorsing the regime's high-handed attempts at controlling migration.
"International agencies must look holistically at the trafficking malaise, and not be complicit in any efforts by the regime to further abuse people's rights under the guise of preventing trafficking," KWAT spokesperson Shirley Seng was quoted by KNG. The KWAT first exposed trafficking of Kachin women on the Sino-Burma border in its 2005 report "Driven Away."
Now the KWAT is trying to create awareness about trafficking in women by producing a compact disc with cartoons to educate Kachins. It is also producing cartoons on the issue in Kachin language called "Shawng Lam Ninghtoi De" which means "Towards the light of future". The cartoon is based on a true story of a trafficked victim.
The cartoon will be released on September. KWAT also produced awareness cartoons in February 2007. The pictures in the cartoons help people understand than just words, the KWAT felt.
(The author is a veteran journalist from India and has been in major newspapers as a Reporter, Deputy Chief of Bureau, News Coordinator, Op-ed and Edit writer.)
